LITA Online Course on mashups and APIs, coming in November
27 October 2010
November 15-19 I'm co-teaching an
online course with Jason Clark on mashups and APIs. The class, which is being offered by
LITA, will cover lots of different Web services out there for libraries and library developers to use. The class is meant for people who are just starting out and are curious to learn more--people who may have heard about Web Services and now want to build their knowledge and abilities from the ground up. Know someone like this? Invite them! Or it could be a good refresher course for more seasoned staff, too. We'll start simple by defining mashups and APIs. There will be lots of examples about what's been done and what's possible. Participants will see some low-fi API and widgets including nifty things that can be accomplished with WorldCat lists and widgets, Google Spreadsheet API and Yahoo Pipes. You'll get a whole session on APIs for bibliographic data, too. You'll hear me cover many of the
OCLC Web services (surprise!) including the
WorldCat Search API,
xIdentifier Services, and
WorldCat Identities. Last but not least, you'll learn about about geolocation, news and media APIs, too. There will be lecture portions, but you'll also get lots of code examples and time for discussion. If you have been looking for a more focused and hands-on learning experience with mashups and APIs--but haven't been able to attend a WorldCat Mashathon--then this course is for you. Thanks to LITA for sponsoring the session, and asking me to teach it with the "help build the library developer community" hat on for OCLC. I have learned so much from other people--and now am glad to share my learning. Note there is a fee for the course, and you can
register for it on the LITA Web site.
-
Karen Coombs
Senior Product Analyst